......He was the one player on defense, more than anyone else, who represented a real hope for change, for greatness, for unlimited possibilites, for many great things to come. That is not to say that his death is just about football, certainly not, but to us as fans of a team that is what we lost. In some ways it is similar to what the players lost, though the future that was taken from them is more personal in that they lost a friend, someone they saw every day, someone they expected to see in the locker room and expected to talk to when they came back from Tampa. That is the future they lost........

This really seems to make sense. The whole letter is good, but this is the focal point that all ties it in, even though I don't think a lot of us realize it.

...any given Sunday....

RIP #21 Sean Taylor. You will be loved and adored by Redskins fans forever!!!!!

GSPODS:
The National Anthem sucks.
What a useless piece of propagandist rhetoric that is.

I'm posting the article, so people don't have to click on the link, per BH's blog.

Guest Blog - EhrenI want to thank everyone for the outpouring of emails I have received this week. It's been completely overwhelming and I am greatly appreciative.

This email, from Ehren, I think, sums up a lot of what you guys are feeling out there, so I wanted to post it. Thanks again.

Ehren writes:

I have been thinking about all the people who have expressed such profound sadness about the death of Sean Taylor and really about how personal many fans of the Redskins have taken the loss. While I think that fans would obviously grieve if anyone on the Redskins died, I think the emotional outpouring has something specific to do with Sean Taylor.

Certainly there are many factors, including the violent nature of the crime, but I also think that it has much to do with the role that Taylor played on the team. Most, if not all, of the people who showed up for the vigil in Ashburn did not really know Sean Taylor. They knew of him, they knew what he was a great player, and they are learning more now about the importance of his daughter and family. But more than that, what I think he represented in some abstract sense was the future.

He was the one player on defense, more than anyone else, who represented a real hope for change, for greatness, for unlimited possibilites, for many great things to come. That is not to say that his death is just about football, certainly not, but to us as fans of a team that is what we lost. In some ways it is similar to what the players lost, though the future that was taken from them is more personal in that they lost a friend, someone they saw every day, someone they expected to see in the locker room and expected to talk to when they came back from Tampa. That is the future they lost.

For his family, of course, it is more personal still and they lost a future that included the holidays, graduations, triumphs, hardships, and all those intimate experiences that families go through. They are all very different experiences in many ways, but what I think links them all is that sense that part of our future, something that we expected to happen and really took for granted, has been taken from us. That, to me, is what is so raw and emotional about the death of a young person especially. It is the future that you expected, of all the things that would have been but now won't be, that you have lost.